Glen Powell Gets an Assist From MacGruber on an Epstein Files-Heavy SNL

And Your Host…

In his monologue, Glen Powell joked about his sudden ubiquity, refuting the “overnight sensation” label with a long list of the post-Spy Kids 3D gigs he toiled in on his way to The Running Man, Top Gun: Maverick, and the like. It was self-effacing and mildly amusing, complete with the stunt cameo of Mitch, the bearded Texas UPS driver who was witness to the Powell clan’s four-years-ago jubilation at Powell’s booking on SNL. (Covid scuttled it at the time, but Mitch got a free trip to New York in 2025, so bravo, Mitch.)

Finally getting his turn as host, Powell was game, practiced… and a little dull, which basically sums up my response to the guy. Posting a picture of himself looking”like a golden retriever about to get a treat” encapsulated Powell’s appeal better than Powell knew, is what I’m saying. I’ve got nothing against TV’s Chad Powers, even if his scrubbed eagerness comes off more manufactured than thrilling. Tonight, Powell was all over the place, applying himself with the amiable professionalism that’s buoyed him to the (to me at least) inexplicable top of the box office. Powell referenced his recent, show-promoting Hot Ones appearance, appeared on an NBC Olympics commercial, and brought Mitch along, all reinforcing his all-out blitz to be the favorite actor of, as Powell joshed, America’s moms. But I kid.

If anything, tonight’s show—another in a season’s worth of workmanlike episodes—suited Powell perfectly. Powell brought a passable Liam Neeson impression for SNL to build a B-minus sketch around. Nothing particularly memorable or adventurous but nothing objectionable, either. Unless, of course, you’re taint-sweatily trying to prevent the release of a certain list of the highest-profile sex criminals you’re definitely on by literally starting a needless war, Wag the Dog style. In that case, this was not the show for you, but we’ll get there.

The Best and the Rest

The Best: Season 51 belongs to Ashley Padilla, and there’s no denying it. The best pure comic actor on the show (with James Austin Johnson running right alongside) the featured player is doing what real SNL stars do in taking over the show by sheer force of talent. The restaurant sketch was another simple idea (Padilla’s late-arriving diner got a very bad haircut from a celebrity stylist) made eminently entertaining through Padilla’s interpretation of a comic setup. People are comparing Padilla’s characterization skills to Kristen Wiig’s and I get that—but I think Padilla’s a better, more nuanced performer. Her diner makes denial a showcase, Padilla’s brave-faced “I like it!” carrying a soul’s-worth of conflicting emotions. Her fellow diners (Powell, Sarah Sherman, Bowen Yang, Ben Marshall) all do admirable work avoiding the tired “point to the joke” structure, perhaps sensing that matching Padilla’s strategy of desperate avoidance is the only way forward. ( Mikey Day, perennial perpetrator of joke-undermining obviousness, has a solid turn as waiter, exploding with a viscerally horrified, “I hate it!!” before calmly announcing, “I’m so sorry. I… will go get you a different server.”)

But it’s all Ashley here, once again finding the heart of a joke in admirably lived-in performance. Her quicksilver pivots from pretending she loves her new side-shaved ‘do to tearful collapse and back in seconds is a harrowing delight. And the sketch tosses in some wonderful weirdness matching Padilla’s escalating, tamped-down madness, as she pretends to love the stylists’ recommended band/clients, The Mickey Mouse Killers. “If you see four guys with this haircut singing about killing kids…,” Padilla begins. And before replacement server Kenan comes in to reveal that he, too, is sporting the “skin square” shaven in the back of his haircut, we also learn that the in-demand stylist’s work can never, ever touch water. Or, as Padilla expresses in hysterically repressed horror, “Whatever chemical he uses in the hair—not allowed to touch water. Because it causes, oh, it’s not brain damage, what is it? Passing! You pass away.”

The Worst: This was the sort of show that didn’t present much above or below the baseline, but to fill this slot with the sketch that just didn’t click for me, I’ll go with the army. Andrew Dismukes is the new recruit assigned to what turns out to be a regiment in the throes of a rivalry between the bobs and the bangs, two squads sporting warring fabulous hairstyles and arch diva attitudes to match. I didn’t hate it—any sketch where everybody (like, the entire cast and Powell) seems to be into it and having fun is at least a little infectious. And there’s even a dog in a wig. Maybe I’m just not on the right wavelength for these sorts of things. (Sadly, I am far from fabulous.) The piece does take a defiant little swipe at the DOD under Fox News bigot Pete Hegseth (“We don’t report to her!”), but this was mostly about the choreographed swanning about and the fabulousness, and, again, I didn’t hate it or anything. Maybe I just need a bob. Bangs don’t work with my face.

The Rest: Scent of a Marriage was pure silliness, and I dug it. With an American director prepping us for the sort of dour Norwegian family drama Best Foreign Film Oscars are made of, leads Chloe Fineman and Powell deliver a take of suitable glowering marital resentment, only to explode into Flula Borg-style exuberant goofiness once Day calls cut. The joke gets repeated throughout the scenes of the imperiously miserable marrieds mourning their floundering union followed by everyone involved leaping up to high-five and jabber in dippily accented glee. Even JAJ’s cameoing Stellan Skarsgård (his grandpa pushed their kid down a hill) can’t help but reveal himself to be a happily babbling ninny after the camera goes off. Just as an aside: James Austin Johnson has a Stellan Skarsgård impression. Hearing him deliver the in-movie line, “I pushed him hard on the shoulder, and watched him tumble straight into the spruce” made me immeasurably happy.

Speaking of impressions, Marcello Hernandez has a Sebastian Maniscalco in his back pocket, and so the bachelor party sketch became an extended showpiece for that. I guess the stand-up and actor is well known enough at this point to get an entire sketch dedicated to teasing his gesture-heavy shtick, and Marcello has one of his most confident star turns of the season as this Maniscalco takes over the friend group’s hang with an incessant stream of observational comedy and exaggerated limb motions.

The first sketch after the monologue wasn’t a game show at least. Still, the bit about a family’s gift of an A.I. app turning an elderly woman’s old photos into surrealistic nightmares was just okay. I did appreciate the sketch’s approximation of the sort of artificially generated slop tech bros keep insisting is the future, with the aged lady’s long-ago mom smoking her hot dog instead of a cigarette and the beloved family dog being revealed as a two-butted monstrosity. And the sight of Mikey Day revealing his Ken Doll crotch was at least as horrifying as the nuke going off behind the spectacle of Glen Powell’s dad playing the aged lady’s infant self like an accordion. As A.I. nonsense continues to infiltrate our social media (always count those fingers, people), it’s at least amusing to mock our techno overlords before all actors are replaced with cost-efficient slave-bots.

The night’s music video parody was a country song where a couple of lovelorn guys (Ben Marshall and Tommy Brennan) musically reveal that the object of their heartbreak is their ex-girlfriends’ cool dads (Kenan Thomson and Powell). The premise is halfway cribbed from an SNL alum’s much better iteration, but it’s still solid enough, especially as the song delves into the complicated awesomeness of one singer’s chosen father figure. (Brennan muses on the day he stuck up for Powell’s moody patriarch by noting how much stress the guy’s been under at work.) Even though neither singer claims to be able to remember their exes’ names (and they push their actual dads out of frame), their crooned admiration for the surrogate dad they’ve lost is handsomely put-together stuff of the sort SNL does so well.

Glen Powell brought along a Liam Neeson Taken impression for the airport sketch, with his ex-wife’s unimpressive new hubby (Dismukes) attempting to win back his wife’s attentions following Neeson’s rescue of their trafficked teen daughter. Powell’s fine—even if a Taken sketch in 2025 isn’t the timeliest, he has Neeson’s Irish growl down. But this is another winning Andrew Dismukes examination of male insecurities as his slope-shouldered Dennis (I know, there are no impressive Dennises) unsuccessfully assures everyone that he, too, was prepared to hop on a plane and kick some sex trafficker butt. Sure, he’s afraid of flying, but Real ID is confusing and he was planning to take a cruise over. I love Dismukes, his way of finding the funny in self-deluded weirdos often provides an episode’s only snatches of welcome absurdity. Here, Dennis’ transparent bravado makes an amusing runner centered on understandable inadequacy in the face of your wife’s towering, hostage-saving ex, with Dismukes even playing out the season’s second-best fart joke for good measure.

Weekend Update Update

The briefest Update in ages (six minutes, no correspondents) was a surprise. Maybe Jost and Che are saving up for when the crap really hits the fan, although they lobbed plenty of shots Donald Trump’s way on that whole Epstein files disaster in the making. The jokes themselves were more about the anchors out-clever-ing each other than they were especially biting, even if the mere weight of the coming revelations lent a tittering anticipation of Trump’s very bad days to come.

Jost’s jokes mostly circled the perimeter of the main story (you know, about the Republican president’s neck-deep involvement in a global child sex trafficking ring his MAGA followers accused everyone but Donald Trump of being involved in). Che and Jost have made themselves the real subjects of Update, with Jost being both reliable punchline (tonight’s jokes accused him of both being in the Illuminati and of having a micro-penis) and the back row spitball artist. Che, on the other hand, thrives on provoking the audience, here digging into the most salacious sideshow of this week’s Epstein revelations (an offhand remark suggesting Trump serviced Bill Clinton) and relishing in being the naughty one. (Che also loves basking in the aftermath of a so-dumb-it’s-clever zinger, ad-libbing after jokes about Epstein’s suspicious jailhouse death and the demise of the Lincoln-headed penny.)

All the off season chatter about potential change to the Update anchors pointed out that the Jost-Che Update is as consistently popular as it is stuck in the same old gear. That there are other, dare I say more engaged comic voices available to take over SNL‘s fake news desk runs up against the fact that the current anchors’ brand of hit-and-run self-obsession still brings in the views.

Recurring Sketch Report

The Epstein files were all over the show tonight (see above and below), even finding their way into… MacGruber? I mean, it’s great to see Will Forte wherever he pops up (RIP The Great North) and Forte’s controlled mania always kept the endlessly recurring McGruber sketches (and movies, and TV series) from wearing out its one joke, but the return here was a surprise. It’s not that the joke—MacGruber is definitely listed among the “rich and powerful that have lived by a different set of rules”—doesn’t fit in with the faux MacGyver’s propensity for over-the-top disreputable weirdness, it’s just that I wonder at which character is going to come back for a belated, out-of-nowhere cameo next. (Just what are Lucien Callow and Fagan up to anyway?)

In practice, MacGruber is still letting his defensive obsessiveness (this time over sidekick Powell’s possession of the unredacted files) distract him from a series of ticking time bombs, with Forte as ever channeling the squirmy self-protectiveness of a thwarted egomaniac loon. As random as it is reliable (even the theme song gradually concedes how bad things look), the MacGruber formula allows one of SNL‘s all-time originals to once more fail to save the day, even if he insists that he’s only among the list of wealthy pedophiles because he fixed Epstein’s plane. And sold them bad cocaine. And crystal meth. Honestly, it could be so much worse.

Political Comedy Report

Well, the government has reopened (after Democrats proved once more that leverage is just a cancelled Timothy Hutton vehicle), the Epstein files are seemingly about to be released, and even the preliminary leaked emails have Donald Trump desperately deploying all-caps social media chaff, armies of soullessly sycophantic spinners, and an entire carrier group to try and deflect the gathering crap-storm. The looming truth that the GOP’s chosen cult leader (and adjudicated rapist) is also a serial sexual predator of children* is the sort of era-defining moral cataclysm that imbues tonight’s cold open with a potently queasy potential for all-out satirical carpet-bombing. Shame that Saturday Night Live can’t quite be stirred to hit the detonator.

To be fair, the sketch hits enough beats to ensure another round of Trump threats to pull NBC’s broadcast license, cancel SNL, and/or have James Austin Johnson sent to one of those ICE black sites dotting Trump’s America. Ashley Padilla debuts her ostentatiously cross-draped Karoline Leavitt, openly displaying her hatred for the press as they (belatedly) smell enough blood in the water to actually ask some questions about “accusations that rhyme with ‘edophile.'” We’re going to see a lot of moralistic Republicans in the days ahead (looking at you, Megyn Kelly) essentially changing their stance from “raping underage girls is bad” to “well, what is the age of consent, really?,” and Padilla’s press secretary makes the pitch at one point that Trump’s only sin was “loving too much… and possibly too young.”

It’s not terrible as these things go—sometimes the inescapable facts are so egregious that simply repeating them on live TV counts as satire. I liked Kam Patterson’s reporter announcing himself as “unnamed Black guy, Fox News” before pitching his softball question, and unquestioned Season 51 all-star Padilla channeled her Leavitt’s rising panic peeking from behind the shameless scolding. JAJ’s Trump made a sudden swap-out at the podium to toss out three false starts at justifying his stonewalling on letting everyone see the hundreds of times he appears among the roster of sex creeps kept by one of the world’s most notorious sex traffickers. But the only joke that landed was about him pardoning a Thanksgiving turkey—who also happens to be a convicted sex offender.

There’s a moral abyss opening up right in the heart of the American experiment, a yawning indictment of (white) America’s soul in choosing this person to lead them. That’s a MacGruber-sized bomb ticking under the country’s feet, one that will expose the naked truth that a whole lot of (white) people are going to dive into the sewer alongside a tyrannical, pedophilic monster* as long as he continues to promise that they—and only they—will remain the only ones whose opinions and rights matter. It’s a lot for a comedy show with pretensions of “sticking it to the man” to tackle, and there’s a definite unease thrumming through the cold open here.

But the usual SNL tack of pretending that all this is just politics as usual is proving less and less sustainable, and I have to wonder if anything will ever see the show ditch the both-sides glibness for something more comedically courageous. Saturday Night Live has never been particularly brave about this stuff, its controversy-baiting reputation paling beside the chances it routinely fails to take. Honestly, if what’s coming doesn’t force Lorne Michaels and company to shake off the show’s practiced caution, then literally nothing will.

*Each asterisk counts as an “allegedly.”

Not Ready for Prime Time Power Rankings

Keeping tabs on the new kids, Tommy Brennan had his strongest show to date, as he and fellow featured player Ben Marshall got their own musical number and both showed up in mid-sized roles elsewhere. Jane Wickline had a funny bit doing a Norwegian accent for a couple of lines, but it remains puzzling why she was held over while some more promising people were let go. Kam Patterson, Veronika Slowikoska, and Jeremy Culhane were in evidence throughout, but it’s all about Padilla in the featured player race.

Other than Padilla (central in three sketches), James Austin Johnson continues to stand out, even without his nightly Trump. The fact that the two best actors with a similar taste for the offbeat are leading the pack so far makes me hopeful. Chloe Fineman had a good sketch clowning alongside Powell in mock Norwegian, plus she got to wheel out her Jennifer Coolidge impression (even if a former host does a better one). Marcello finally had a big sketch tonight, while Bowen led the troops as only he can. Dismukes amusingly whipped off his shirt to once again prove that ego is the enemy of comedy in the Taken sketch. And Mikey Day hit a major milestone. As much as I tease the guy, he remains a workhorse, so congrats.

Ten-To-Oneland Report

My only real gripe with MacGruber was his third segment taking away the final sketch slot. So I’m putting Ashley Padilla’s haircut here as an honorary 10-to-one sketch. My review, my rules.

Stray Observations

Didn’t see an in memoriam title card for Dan McGrath tonight after the former SNL and Simpsons writer died this week.

Olivia Dean…. exists. Man, those were some dull songs.

“President Trump denied online rumors that the gold decorations in the Oval Office came from Home Depot. Even though he has a whole team of guys taking stuff from Home Depot all the time.”—Che, over a photo of masked ICE agents.

Episode Grade: Yup, another Season 51 B-Minus.

We’re off until December 6th when Melissa McCarthy returns to host for her sixth go-’round, this time with a side of Dijon.